Five-State Cattle Report Fills Southern Plains Gap

Cattle feeders and buyers pricing off the 5-Area average will see Southern Plains sales counted again under a pooled series.

Updated on Nov. 3, 2026 in Agriculture

Bold flat-color editorial illustration of five steel grain bins in a row on a shared concrete pad across a flat Plains horizon, evoking a pooled regional cattle price series. — The USDA will publish a single pooled negotiated cash cattle series combining transactions from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado to restore Southern Plains representation in the 5-Area fed cattle average. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service has begun publishing a negotiated cash cattle report combining transaction data from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. The change addresses repeated reporting gaps that reduced how representative the 5-Area fed cattle average price has been for Southern Plains cattle sellers and buyers.

Why it matters

Reporting gaps in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico during 2026 left the national benchmark leaning on Nebraska and Iowa-Minnesota transactions since late August. Pooling five states lets the report meet USDA confidentiality thresholds, which is why the change was made now.

The 3/70/20 confidentiality rule requires at least three reporting companies, caps any one firm at 70% of volume, and limits sole-source reporting to 20% of the time. Occasional 2026 price gaps between Southern Plains and other regions ran several dollars per hundredweight.

The players

USDA Agricultural Marketing Service

The federal agency that administers the Livestock Mandatory Reporting program and publishes the national cattle price benchmarks used across the beef supply chain.

The details

The new report pools existing Livestock Mandatory Reporting transaction data from five states into one negotiated cash series rather than reporting each state separately. Only regions that satisfy the 3/70/20 rule are counted toward the 5-Area fed cattle average, so a state with too few buyers can be withheld without cutting it out of the national calculation. The underlying cattle marketing practices and trading activity are unchanged; only the reporting structure is different.

2026: Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico reports were repeatedly withheld and Kansas was interrupted.
Since late August 2026: the 5-Area average largely reflected Nebraska and Iowa-Minnesota transactions.
November 3, 2026: USDA began publishing the new five-state negotiated cash cattle report.

Market Landscape

Under the Livestock Mandatory Reporting framework, the 3/70/20 rule is the constraint that determines which regional cattle sales can appear in the national benchmark. Pooling states is a structural adjustment to that rule rather than a change to how cattle are bought and sold.

Cattle feeders, sellers and buyers in the Southern Plains should review how their transactions feed the 5-Area benchmark going forward. Operators whose contracts reference the 5-Area average should confirm with their accountants or qualified counsel how the new series affects their pricing terms.

The takeaway

Watch whether the new five-state series keeps Southern Plains transactions in the 5-Area average on a regular basis once historical data is published. Livestock operators should track those benchmark inputs as they set forward pricing.